It had been a long time since we'd been back to Maryland to celebrate Thanksgiving. There were several reasons to make the trip this year: the grandkids are in college and may head out on their own in a few years; Dana bought building for his Macintosh company; and it had been too long. (Last time we were in the area was for Weber's off-to-college party and now he's a senior.)

 
My donation for dinner was a large salad and pesto dressing--both made from our garden harvests. On Sunday, I made the pesto with the total basil harvest and had 4 extra pints to freeze. I made the dressing by adding oil & vinegar to the pesto, prepared and bagged the greens and other salad stuff, and then put it all in the fridge.

We were on our way early on Monday morning figuring that this would not be too traffic heavy on this very busy week for travel.

We liked this whirligig sculpture at the North Carolina welcome center. A gentle breeze made its parts twirl. It was getting colder as we went north.

Sunset at the bridge over the James River on the Richmond, VA bypass.

14 hours after we left we were at Ft. Myer, the military base next to Arlington National Cemetery.

The next morning, we loved watching the sunrise over Washington, DC from Ft. Myer.

We stopped to admire the horses for ceremonies in Arlington National Cemetery.

We were allowed to ride our bikes through the cemetery from Ft. Myer, but as we found out the last time we did this that we are not allowed to ride (or even walk) our bikes in the other direction.

 
We crossed Memorial Bridge and were ready to put in a day at The Mall by 8am. The museums would not open until 10am, but that was fine with us.

Someone was filming a promo for Redskins football of people running with flags in from the base of the Lincoln Memorial steps toward the reflection pool. A little kid was there as well.

The new African American Museum is under construction near the Washington Monument.

 
The sculpture garden had some pieces we hadn't seen. "Graft" the tree sculpture by Roxy Paine is 45 feet high and 45 feet wide and is composed of more than 8,000 parts and weighs 16,000 pounds. Here's more information in Arts Observer. The other sculpture is "Thinker on a Rock" by Barry Flanagan.

 
We enjoyed the fall scenery in the sidewalk gardens.

We stopped a a couple of museums and called it a day. By the time we got back to Ft. Myer it was 2pm and we'd put 12 miles on our bikes. We headed to Lucia Robson's house in our old neighborhood to catch up.

Wednesday we visited Dana's new MacMedics office (Somehow we didn't take photos, so this is one that Dana posted on Facebook.) and had dinner with him and his family. So great to catch up with everyone.

The next day was Thanksgiving at the Weber's house. (Christa's parents.)

 
Dinner consisted of both traditional and vegan selections. There were 20 people in attendance. We played ring around the island to serve ourselves.

The blessing...

With Olivia. Over my shoulder is a sketch of Christa and Julia when they were kids.

With Weber and Dana.

We left really early on Black Friday so that we'd be south of the DC beltway by 6am.

We stopped at the North Carolina welcome center going south and a different whirligig sculpture was there.

While the traffic was heavy at times, there were no delays until we were just 10 miles from home and spent 40 minutes getting through the traffic jam due to too many people and a minor accident. We were very happy to finally drive into our own driveway. It was a long day on the road.